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Overview
The dramatic story of how a group of nineteenth-century fossilists forever changed our view of history—and laid the groundwork for the Darwinian revolution.Against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution, an extraordinary circle of fossilists struggled to make sense of a mysterious, prehistoric world—a world they had to piece together from the fossilized and often fragmentary remains of animals never before seen. In this transporting, seamlessly written book, Christopher McGowan takes us back to a time when geology and paleontology were as young and vibrant as genetic engineering is today. The nineteenth-century pioneers of these new disciplines were an eccentric lot, from different social classes and sexes, with a range of motivations in fossil hunting. These "Dragon Seekers" sought to persuade a populace raised on a literal interpretation of Genesis that the ground they walked was once a very frightening and unfamiliar place. A sweeping narrative history, The Dragon Seekers shows how these remarkable characters forever changed our interpretation of the world and its inhabitants.
Author Biography: Christopher McGowan is a full professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Toronto and Senior Curator of Paleobiology at the Royal Ontario Museum. He is the author of ten other books, including The Raptor and the Lamb and Dinosaurs, Spitfires, and Sea Dragons.
Synopsis
The dramatic story of how a group of nineteenth-century fossilists forever changed our view of history—and laid the groundwork for the Darwinian revolution.
Against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution, an extraordinary circle of fossilists struggled to make sense of a mysterious, prehistoric world—a world they had to piece together from the fossilized and often fragmentary remains of animals never before seen. In this transporting, seamlessly written book, Christopher McGowan takes us back to a time when geology and paleontology were as young and vibrant as genetic engineering is today. The nineteenth-century pioneers of these new disciplines were an eccentric lot, from different social classes and sexes, with a range of motivations in fossil hunting. These "Dragon Seekers" sought to persuade a populace raised on a literal interpretation of Genesis that the ground they walked was once a very frightening and unfamiliar place. A sweeping narrative history, The Dragon Seekers shows how these remarkable characters forever changed our interpretation of the world and its inhabitants.
Author Biography: Christopher McGowan is a full professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Toronto and Senior Curator of Paleobiology at the Royal Ontario Museum. He is the author of ten other books, including The Raptor and the Lamb and Dinosaurs, Spitfires, and Sea Dragons.
LA Times
...an informative and exciting account of... those scientists who discovered the dinosaurs and thus paved the way for Darwin's theory of evolution... suspenseful"